UnTours: When Travel Gives it all Back

Leena (: 00:00

Welcome to Up to So Good, the podcast that unlocks the secrets of creating a purpose-driven business, so we can all make this world a better place. Come join the conversation.

Deborah (: 00:12

Hi there, and welcome to Up To So, Good, the podcast that explores the purpose of business. I am Deborah, the podcast producer, and I'm just subbing in for Leena to introduce this next episode as she's away far corners of the globe filming media content for some of our corporate clients. And welcome to season three. If you have joined us for season one and two, we thank you and we hope you'll be just as inspired by season three. And we so appreciate our listenership. Our first episode of season three, we speak with Sarah Payne. She is Senior Director of Impact and Operations at the Untours Foundation. Sarah shares the inspiring story of Hal Taussig. He was the founder of Untours, which is a really unique travel company.

(: 01:00

It allowed people to travel and connect with communities and live like locals. In 1992, he founded the Untours Foundation where he channeled all the profits from the Untours Travel Company to support mission-driven entrepreneurs tackling poverty and social injustice. In 2007, Untours became the very first certified B corporation, and Hal's legacy continues to shape the B Corp movement today. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Leena (: 01:35

Hello and welcome to Episode Good, the podcast that explores the purpose of business. I am with a very special guest, a very lovely friend of mine, Sarah Payne within the Untours family. And I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah a couple of years ago now, it's been almost two years. It has been no, maybe a year and a half at the Giant B Corp conference that was hosted in Vancouver. It feels like we've known each other forever, and you're part of such an incredible organization. So, I'd love for you to describe Untours and what it is you do and like what started Untours.

Sarah Payne (: 02:12

Awesome. Yeah, well, we have a pretty cool origin story, so I'm excited to share it. So, Untours is a travel company that was started in the 1970s by a guy named Hal Taussig. And he was an educator. He was formerly a cattle rancher. He was a really interesting guy that he was at the University of Pennsylvania. It came time to take his sabbatical, and so he traveled to Europe and really wanted to do it through this lens of traveling slowly and having authentic experiences and really being rooted in local communities and meeting the people and building connections. So, all on a budget.

(: 02:53

So, he published a book after called the Shoestring Sabbatical, and it led him to this idea of wanting to offer that style of travel to other educators taking sabbatical. So, we started this company and what he found was he was actually attracting tourists, not necessarily educators. So, he ran with it. It was now a travel company, and the concept really resonated. It was putting a lot, mostly Americans in short-term rentals in apartments across Europe. So, this was obviously decades before Airbnb and it was a new and novel thing. So, the company started doing well and making a lot of profits, but Hal, for religious reasons had taken a vow of poverty before starting the business.

(: 03:38

So, he didn't want to keep any of the profits for himself, which is a really unique thing to do, especially for an entrepreneur who fully believed in the power of business, but just didn't want to keep that wealth personally for himself. So, he tried a few ideas over the years and landed on creating the Untours Foundation in the early 1990s and set it up as a way to receive 100% of the travel company's profits and then use those funds as basically a revolving investment fund. So, this was around the time of Muhammad Yunus and microfinance, and Hal was really inspired by that to basically provide capital in a way that was really generating economic opportunity in a very equitable and dignifying kind of way.

(: 04:24

So, that was how the foundation started and how the travel company started. And the foundation was operating pretty quietly, early supporters of the Fair Trade Movement, lots of just social impact, place-based investing in our home community of Philadelphia and some of the underserved neighborhoods there. And then basically, Untours got on the national radar because it was a really interesting model and won this award for being the most generous company in America. And that caught the attention of some guys who were leaving their career in business and wanted to start something new. And that was the B Corp movement.

(: 05:00

So, Hal got linked up with the co-founders of B Lab and really inspired them to get all these ideas about the power of business when it's unleashed for good, what that can look like and what that can be. So, we were actually then the world's first certified B corporation. The travel company is still operating. We've expanded out of Europe and we're in Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, and we're launching in Kenya. And then the foundation has also grown. So, we're now a team of five. And in our work at the foundation, I manage our investment portfolio and we on a daily basis are meeting with entrepreneurs, looking for alignment with our different impact areas, like regenerative tourism and sustainability and equity and all of those kinds of things.

(: 05:47

And then providing capital, mostly in the form of affordable and accessible low interest loans. So, all that, what we do is about how can we use this vehicle that is business in a way to really positively impact humanity, impact the natural world, and just do good things. So, I'm really, really fortunate to be doing this work.

Leena (: 06:09

There is so much in what you just said. I mean, for our viewers and our listeners, there's a lot. We need to unpack that slowly because we've got this, oh my gosh, this travel enterprise that turns out to be super successful. And Hal Taussig, the genius behind it, takes a vow of poverty and doesn't take those profits. So, that in and of itself is pretty beautiful and inspirational. And in fact, let's start with Hal a little bit about him. Wasn't there a story where he gave away his car and started to bike?

Sarah Payne (: 06:44

Yes.

Leena (: 06:45

Can you tell us what happened there with Hal?

Sarah Payne (: 06:46

There are so many good Hal stories, but this one, he...

Leena (: 06:48

So many.

Sarah Payne (: 06:50

Yeah. He picked up a hitchhiker at one point, was talking to this guy and found out that he really had no way to get to work because he was not near any public transit lines, and Hal was like, "Just take my car, you can have it." And he ended up then biking to work for the rest of his life. Well into his 80s, he was biking to work and did not have a car. In the winter in Philadelphia, it made everyone very stressed, but, yeah, that was who Hal was. He was just this incredibly genuine spirit. Actually, I didn't have the privilege of knowing him, but his legacy lives on and our co-CEO, Elizabeth, who knew him really well.

(: 07:29

And yeah, he's just an incredible example, I think of someone that knows who they are and what their values are and just goes after them with everything that they have, right? Someone who is just so aligned that they do something that's really incredible and therefore, I think therefore resonant with people who also want to be doing things in a good way and want to be going about the world and traveling in a way that's also aligned with who they're...

Leena (: 07:57

It's so beautiful because I think he might be one of the only examples that I know of that I've heard of one of the most maybe famous examples, but one of the only ones I've ever heard of where he truly embraced a vow of poverty, but still made a super successful, financially profitable business at the same time and was not motivated in any way by greed. This man is a Saint. Hal Taussig should be known as an international figure. This guy is like the Mother Teresa of the business world. That's who Hal Taussig is your founder of Untours. I mean, I think that's fair. He is the Mother Teresa of the corporate world.

(: 08:39

And then the next part of this story is interesting because, so you take all these profits and it's like, what do you do with all these profits? And he creates the foundation that invests in other companies trying to make an impact. That is incredible

Sarah Payne (: 08:57

As of now, so when Hal passed in 2016, he actually gave the company to the foundation, so we are now the sole shareholder. So, even in his final act of generosity was to just give away the company.

Leena (: 09:10

That is incredible. So, the foundation, the non-profit then owns this profitable arm of the B Corp.

Sarah Payne (: 09:16

Yeah.

Leena (: 09:16

That is just, oh my God. I mean, imagine if all companies work that way, because the fact is that the purpose of Untours, the Untours family is one part of it. One could say the purpose is the travel company, but isn't it that no, the purpose is actually, it's an impact company, right? I mean, what would you say the purpose of Untours is?

Sarah Payne (: 09:40

It's a great question. Our mission is to unleash capital and radical kindness, which is a very interesting, on the one hand, it's like this finance kind of thing, like unleashing capital. And on the other hand, it's like but it's a way that we do it that makes it so unique and very spirit led and motivated, or I say values driven I guess, but I come to it in spirit and a lot of our folks who work for us do. Yeah, I think it really is about how do you operationalize this kind of generosity and radical kindness and what does that look like in the private sector? And it actually some of...

Leena (: 10:15

It's so amazing. It's so amazing.

Sarah Payne (: 10:19

Yeah. And it gets more interesting because when Hal started the foundation, he didn't want to just create another foundation. He actually resisted for a while of doing a foundation because it was like, well, that's what everyone does. They make a bunch of money and then they give a little bit to their foundation and go do good work. And he was like, "I don't want to do that." So, we started a foundation. But unlike most foundations in the United States, the vast majority, and I can only speak for the US, but 95% of a foundation's assets can be just invested to grow more wealth for that foundation. Only 5% has to be used for grants and the mission activities of a foundation.

Leena (: 10:58

Really?

Sarah Payne (: 10:58

Yeah.

Leena (: 10:58

Oh my goodness.

Sarah Payne (: 10:59

So, we think foundation and we think, "Oh, everything that they're doing is they're out there giving away all of your money." It's not the case. And that 5% can actually cover the foundation's overhead. And so, there's been in recent years, yeah.

Leena (: 11:12

That's incredible. That can really lead to so much corruption. I mean...

Sarah Payne (: 11:16

It can. And the other thing is that in recent years, there have been some pretty big exposes of prominent foundations who it turns out with their 5%, they're funding all the social impact and environmental conservation and all that stuff. The other 95% is invested in business as usual. So, you can literally be giving grants to communities that are downstream of environmental harm and invested in the refineries that are causing that harm.

Leena (: 11:43

Unbelievable. Wow.

Sarah Payne (: 11:44

It is such a broken paradigm of foundations and of, again, the dark side of philanthropy. So, again, since being founded, we practiced mission aligned investing. And Elizabeth, our co-CEO, a lot of her work focuses on this advocacy with other foundations because for a lot of them, it's not malintended. Same thing with the business world and shareholder primacy. There isn't necessarily evil intent here, but it's just how the system is. And when you get into that system, you're like, "Okay, I have my new job as CEO or on the board of a foundation, and you're doing the paradigm that has been done." So, it's not necessarily like mal intent.

(: 12:28

So, a lot of what Elizabeth does is we do these know what you own reports for foundation. So, they can look into their holdings and drill down and see, are we actually invested in things that are counter to our mission? It's like a whole nother layer of impact of what the Untours Foundation and Untours does is spreading this model and showing it is possible to align all of your assets with your mission directly investing into other companies, for example, rather than in Wall Street and creating both impact and sustaining yourself financially while doing it.

Leena (: 13:00

It's very amazing.

Sarah Payne (: 13:01

So, that's very much all the interest that we want to get out in the world.

Leena (: 13:05

Wow. So, it also sounds like the way that the foundation was created was it is it's deeply intentional and very conscious and different from the way many other foundations are created. And operationally, it's very different. I love what you said that it might not have been, and it isn't necessarily mal intent. It's just the way that the system is set up, and it seems like so many of the ills in our society so much is because of these systems that are set up that really reward greed and don't do anything to reward impact, that you have to basically be somebody who is self-motivated the way Hal was to really promote any kind of goodness in this world, and there's something so wrong about that.

Sarah Payne (: 13:58

Yeah, it's these unintended consequences of these economic structures that we set up. And because in some ways, business itself is not inherently evil. I think growing up, and I was pretty radical, I was like, "Oh, I don't like business at all. I don't like capitalism, all this stuff." But we're always going to have economic exchange. The creation of profit, the creation of value, and of selling things of value for profit is not evil, right? That's the whole point. Social enterprise is you can be solving problems and making money to sustain yourself, so you can keep solving these problems for people, whether that's environmentally, socially, economically.

(: 14:37

So, yeah, I mean, I think it is really tough in this system to then try to come in later and tweak it, right? So, the B Corp movement speaks to that a bit. Benefit corporation legislation, if you're a B Corp, you're legally accountable to your stakeholders and not just to creating value for your shareholders, but it still requires a little bit of, but the executive or the owner needs to have opted into that. So, yeah, I mean, I think the system as it is, is concentrating wealth, concentrating capital in a way that is obviously very unhealthy. And I think the interesting thing is we're now seeing that it's a bad business case to do that too.

(: 15:24

Because when you're setting all this money up into the top of the funnel, well then your employees aren't making what they should be and they're not excited to come to work. Then you're actually externalizing your costs on the environment, which is not good for business because we all need air to breathe for business to run and clean water and all these things. So, we're realizing this is what actually can drive profitability. However, and so, now the next layer is that, but as people realize that this can drive profitability, now they're trying to shortcut, it's almost like spiritual bypassing, right? They're like, "Oh, we're going to make really good jobs for people, but the end goal is still profit."

(: 16:00

And so, I bang my head against the wall metaphorically sometimes because it's like, how do we change that? I think, and we've talked about this before, but at a certain point, you come down to what is happening spiritually in people and in our society that we don't question these things, that we don't have ways of conceptualizing value and what true wealth means in a way that is not concentrating money. And I think some CEOs and founders really get it. I'm here in San Diego and we have some cool business leaders that they have a group that goes out and surfs and gets out into the world and into the environment. And I think when you do things like that, it also shows you that what else is out here of value and that we need to preserve.

(: 16:57

And so, sometimes I just wonder, how do we get more people out into nature, into communities and seeing these frontline impacts? Because we're also just so isolated sometimes as leaders. I don't know, it's like I really see a lot of leadership challenges, and this is like where I think Hal and people like Hal are just such a beacon of what's possible.

Leena (: 17:23

Oh, gosh. Yeah, yeah. Well, and also, I wonder if one of the answers, I'd love to talk more about the spiritual thread as well, because I think we uncovered that when we interviewed a whole bunch of top leaders in this field for the Hal Taussig Award. But before that, I wonder if part of it is also that in general, when you think about a business, if they ask themselves what's their purpose, how do businesses answer that? The Untours family within the Untours umbrella, the foundation and the travel company, the purpose is really about expanding goodness. And as you said, radical kindness. And that really is the purpose. The purpose isn't just great travel or the purpose isn't just making profit.

(: 18:05

But for many businesses, that is their purpose. The purpose is profit, the purpose is sustaining their bottom line. The purpose is fattening up the CEO and the executive's paychecks. There's no higher purpose. And I hope that we get to a place in our evolution, where it's unfortunate to have to potentially maybe legislate these things. But what about a mindset shift? If people started thinking about their businesses from the place of what is the purpose of this business? And sometimes, that purpose is going to align with what you actually do and sometimes it's not. And what you do is a means to attain that purpose. Look at someone like Ben and Jerry's.

(: 18:46

They're actually an activist company and they make really good ice cream, but their purpose is beyond that. You look at, you mentioned Dr. Bronner's, beautiful, amazing company, but their purpose goes way beyond just making profit and making good soaps. They make good soaps too.

Sarah Payne (: 19:03

Yeah, yeah. It's like on the one level, the purpose of any business, I guess, is to generate money, but what's the why behind it? For us, our purpose to put people on planes and get them to cool destinations, the purpose is connecting people with one another across cultural divides, to connect people with themselves, to connect people back to the earth. So, yeah, it very much is motivated by those things. I think the challenge, and again, these are the failings I would say of capitalism, is like, well, that's not super easy to quantify, right? We can't measure that. How do we put that on a P and L? How do we report that in our updates to our shareholders? But it's like that's not the point. It's just completely not the point.

(: 19:43

And I think a lot of the companies that we invest in really do have that purpose. We don't make investments into companies that don't have a deep purpose. Every company that we support has begun and exists to try to solve an issue that we face. And that's where I get a lot of my, we're talking about all these heavy systemic challenges and barriers. But in my day to day, I get to connect with people who are just, they chose the hard work of starting a business because it is hard as a way to create positive impact in the world in so many ways. Literally, our portfolio of investments is just a litany of examples of these people.

(: 20:32

For example, there's this company in Costa Rica that they upcycle Southwest Airlines seats into these really fashionable and awesome bags and passport holders, and they do it by employing rural women in the community, providing them with great jobs, wraparound support, and now they're bringing in tourists to learn more about their model. That is so cool.

Leena (: 20:53

That's amazing. Yes. That is amazing.

Sarah Payne (: 20:56

It's so cool.

Leena (: 20:58

Well, I think also, well let's go back to even these spiritual pieces. That was amazing. So, Sarah and I, we did this video where we interviewed a number of people who were selected by B Lab. Okay, B Lab selection committee of who would be given the Hal Taussig Award. So, Hal being this beautiful, inspirational founder of Untours, of your company, inspired so many other leaders, and B Lab was taking notice of these leaders that were doing business a little differently, that were really using their profits in a huge way for positive impact in the world, and in a way that was measurable. There was that one couple that we interviewed, and I believe, didn't they end up taking all their profits from selling shoes?

(: 21:48

And they bought the Sustainable Farm. I believe was that in Costa Rica or no? I can't remember where.

Sarah Payne (: 21:55

I think Belize, Silk Grass.

Leena (: 21:57

Belize. We need to connect with them again. Remember they told us we can go to the farm anytime that we want.

Sarah Payne (: 22:00

I know, I know.

Leena (: 22:05

So, we need to go to Belize, hang out with them. But they were, I mean, first of all, those conversations were so inspiring. These were really successful people, multi-multi-millionaires who basically, I remember that couple because they said once they had enough to make sure that their lives were secure and their children were secure and everyone's comfortable, and they have their retirements, they didn't need the other hundreds of millions of dollars. So, then they took that money and they said, "What can we do? What can we do with this to make this world better? Okay, we can invest in Belize in their farming and allow to allow and enabling a local farming and sustainable farming to protect Belize." Powerful, amazing.

(: 22:45

And again, very similar in some ways to Hal Taussig. They didn't take a vow of poverty I got to say that's pretty amazing. Hal, pretty extreme about the...

Sarah Payne (: 22:52

It's radical. Yep

Leena (: 22:53

Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't know that I could do that, but I will say it's so beautiful to the mindset of fine, get to a place where you feel secure and you feel comfortable. But then after that, all of that incredible money that you've made, the good that that could do, leaning into that, it is just such a beautiful model. And imagine where we would be if all the billionaires actually thought like that as opposed to where we are now, where billionaires, we struggle to get them to pay taxes. That's...

Sarah Payne (: 23:28

And it's like why and it's so arbitrary.

Leena (: 23:30

It's so disgusting. Yeah. They don't need lower taxes. Billionaires don't need lower taxes.

Sarah Payne (: 23:37

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think too of, for example, Danny from Small Giants, he was someone that through marriage, his partner came a wealthy family and they inherited all this wealth, and he was like, "I don't want, this does not feel good. It's invested in all these wrong places." And so, they actually do a similar thing multiplied capital and support a bunch of cool organizations around the world. So, this isn't to necessarily even demonize money or wealth, right?

Leena (: 24:03

Right, right.

Sarah Payne (: 24:04

But I do think that at a certain point, it's not good for us because it skews your perception of what is the value there. Because again, like I was saying, it's so arbitrary to just want to hit the one billion in net worth. It's like, why? What does that mean to you? Is that really more valuable than having a well-rounded life, where you know that you're having an impact and doing the most you can to leave this world better off? I can't really comprehend it, but yeah, I mean, everyone that we interviewed for that award had some really incredible story of what they did with their business and what it enabled them to do.

(: 24:45

But yeah, as you were saying, it was like, I think everybody at some point brought up the why behind this is because they framed it in different ways, but I think we both see it as deeply spiritual. It was very values, it comes from their soul, and it just came up in terms of community, what's really important in life, right? They all had that kind of mentality of, okay, what's the point to all these?

Leena (: 25:10

A hundred percent.

Sarah Payne (: 25:12

And why am I doing this? What else can I be doing? So, yeah, I mean, need more of those in the world for sure, and lift up those examples. I think that, yeah, people need to realize that, yeah, we have this power, especially collectively, and I think that's something we haven't maybe touched on a ton, but this idea of community is this can really be our bastion against a lot of this. It really can be our way that we can have resilience and stand against the bad and stand for something better. It's hard to do that alone. But if you're with people in a community that you're all linking arms, you're all saying, we want a better way, I mean it just makes so much easier when you have other people who are reinforcing your message, who are feeding positive energy.

(: 26:01

And I do think we live in a world for a lot of reasons where people have become more lonely. We don't have this sense of community. And that is ties back to spirituality for me of humans aren't meant to be like this. We're not meant to live in our little islands of houses and just our own nuclear family, and that's all who we care about. We're not only spiritual creatures, but we're social creatures and we need each other. We literally physically, emotionally, mentally, we need other people. And I think sometimes there's shortcut ways to do that. I just saw this post on Instagram. It was like, okay, feeling lonely. There's an app for that.

(: 26:38

It's like, no, just go on outside and talk to someone. I think sometimes even like now are complicating the issue. Again, I think fundamentally humans, we know what we want and we all actually, I think want the same things. We want to feel like we belong, which I heard this great definition of belong is like this feeling of it's okay to be here. We all want to feel like it is okay for us to be here in whatever context that's in. So, we all want to belong. We all want to be able to provide for ourselves and our families. We all want to have freedom to choose what we want. I think we all want health. So, there's all of these things that in community, that all becomes stronger and you can pull out these universal things.

(: 27:22

Yeah, I think there's a lot of forces that keep us apart as well. I mean even politically, but social media. I mean, there's a whole list of things I think that are not working in the favor of community and connection.

Leena (: 27:34

But you look at Hal Taussig, the founder of Untours, it's so beautiful what he did and motivated by his own spiritual beliefs, especially his valve poverty, and using all those profits for good, leading to then funding a company that funds other companies that do good. So, that is deeply inspiring. I suspect that also created a beautiful community. Am I right or is there a wonderful community amongst a lot of... okay, that's incredible. So, what has been the outcome of all of the investment into these various other companies in terms of are they successful? Are they deeply profitable, or are they supporting other companies? What have been some of the positive outcomes of this community that you've all created?

Sarah Payne (: 28:19

Yeah. Yeah, great question. Yeah, so the companies we support, we call them our investees. Yeah, it's an incredible community of people. And so, whenever we gather them, usually it has to be virtual because they're all over the world. The way that they can inspire one another and make connections and offer up thoughts and resources and advice, I think especially entrepreneurs can feel really lonely, and it feels like the things that you're facing are a unique challenge. But you get with other entrepreneurs and you realize, "Oh, we're all worried about cash flow. We're all worried about the seasonality of tourism." And so, just that feeling of solidarity and being seen and then being uplifted, that is huge.

(: 29:04

When we gather our investees and we've been doing it quarterly, it's like the highlight for me. You just leave those calls feeling just so energized, seeing all of this positivity towards one another and encouragement. And yeah, I mean, we have a really low default rate, so I think these companies are...

Leena (: 29:22

Yes, I was going to ask about that.

Sarah Payne (: 29:24

Yeah. Yeah, it's been under 1%, which is pretty incredible.

Leena (: 29:27

What? That's amazing.

Sarah Payne (: 29:29

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, they're good companies that really we're providing catalytic capital, and we do take risks, but the whole point is to companies that often, for a variety of reasons have faced barriers to accessing friendly capital, just having a little bit a new initiative, or again, to face a tough financial season. Whatever the case may be, it's really just helping these companies get past, okay, is there a barrier that with a bit of money you can get past and continue operating your business profitably? And that's the role that we play. We don't write huge checks, honestly, and we support small businesses, but sometimes it frankly doesn't take a lot. Sometimes, you need $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, and that's our niche.

(: 30:18

It really can go a long way. There are, yeah, a lot of really cool examples. I was actually just sent earlier this week, some photos. We made a loan to an ecotourism based in the Ecuadorian Amazon that is the coolest place ever. It's a hundred percent indigenous owned. Started by these communities that came together and said, "We want to choose our path for economic development." They saw a lot of the extractive industries that were taking over in other parts of the country, and they banded together and said, "We're going to start a sustainable tourism enterprise here in the Amazon." It's called Kapawi Ecolodge and has been very successful. We got in touch and we just financed the creation of a new family bungalow there.

(: 31:03

And these are all in solar power, and it's all made with local and regenerative materials. It's incredible. And getting the pictures of that new bungalow and like, "Oh, you have a family coming in and-"

Leena (: 31:12

Oh, wow.

Sarah Payne (: 31:13

... all of this stuff, it's like that's what you can do." When you have money to be able to support things like that, when your business is able to be profitable and fund things like that, I mean that is so rewarding. That's to me what we need more of, right? And these businesses that they might not have had access to that funding if we didn't have a very specific focus on doing exactly that. So, yeah. So, a lot of amazing companies in our portfolio and, yeah, all of them I think have a lot of the same values, right? I really think we are part of one community even before we know one another, right? It's like you meet these entrepreneurs-

Leena (: 31:56

Absolutely.

Sarah Payne (: 31:57

... and you're like, "Yeah, you get it." Yeah. And so, those conversations are so awesome. And then you're able to just by writing a check, truly being able to unleash amazing stuff.

Leena (: 32:11

How many...

Sarah Payne (: 32:11

I can't... oh yeah, go ahead.

Leena (: 32:13

How many companies do you guys support currently? How many are in your portfolio? And how many have the...

Sarah Payne (: 32:17

They're about 60.

Leena (: 32:21

Sixty? Has that been since the beginning of Untours or just currently?

Sarah Payne (: 32:23

No. So, since the beginning of the foundation, we've done over 400 investments, over $11 million. Right now, our fund is about 2 million, and there's about 60 active companies in the portfolio.

Leena (: 32:35

Amazing.

Sarah Payne (: 32:36

Yeah. And they're truly all incredible. I mean, they're the reason why my work is so cool. I mean, it's just incredible to be able to be a piece of unlocking what they're doing.

Leena (: 32:49

And so, the companies, does the foundation sustain itself in the sense of when the companies you invest in, when they search profit, they pay you back the loan with a little bit of interest as well? Has that been enough to keep you sustaining yourselves, or do you rely on the travel part of the business to continue sustaining yourselves?

Sarah Payne (: 33:08

We rely on the travel business, which since COVID has been pretty tough. So, we also rely on philanthropy and donations and grants and partners, because frankly, for our loans, we do charge interest, but it's nominal. Our goal is not to make money off of these, right? We consider anything. We make an interest, like a loan loss reserve. If someone is not able to repay that can cover some of those costs.

Leena (: 33:30

Gotcha.

Sarah Payne (: 33:31

But it absolutely does not cover our salaries because we're not in this to generate that money for ourselves. Yeah, so we do have philanthropic partners, donors, we get grants. All of that stuff sustains the good work. So, yes, I mean, there is a role for business and as Untours is profitable and all of that goes directly into the foundation, yeah, want to see that...

Leena (: 33:58

Untours is the travel part that you mean?

Sarah Payne (: 33:59

Yep. Yep, yeah.

Leena (: 33:59

And then how is the health of the Untours, the travel part of his business?

Sarah Payne (: 34:00

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean COVID was obviously really tough for the travel industry, people not able to move freely across borders. Also, the Untours model has been more challenging because now you do have Airbnb, and now you do have all of these platforms. You can book your own trips, and we offer independent supported travel is what we call it. So, you book your accommodation and you have some local support, but it's this mix of you. It's not all planned out. It's not a whole itinerary of things. You can still be independent and choose the things you want to do, but there's someone there on the ground to welcome you, to bring you to a few experiences that we have curated. But yeah, that's the idea.

(: 34:43

But I mean, frankly, there are so many ways to travel now, and people are more independent. And so, it's tough. It is a tough place to be. Our team has grown and we're growing into new destinations, which is really exciting. I personally love that we're beyond Europe at this point, and I think there's always new horizons for us. As the world's first certified B corporation, we're very aware that there's things that we can do, for example, to be more environmentally sustainable. Travel is a hard industry to be sustainable in because you're sending people on flights. You're putting people on planes, which generates carbon and all of these things.

(: 35:17

So, there's always new frontiers in terms of the impact that we can create through the business and obviously, we want to grow the business and have more people traveling this way. But yeah, I mean, it's been incredible. And so, the foundation has a fund called the Reset Tourism Fund that is we're all about funding tours and companies. And so, that is one of our focus areas is we fundamentally believe in travel as a force for good. I did a presentation, I don't know, last summer I think. The title of it was that it's not a coincidence, the World's First B Corp is a travel company, because I really do fundamentally believe travel is a way to create connection, to create curiosity, to create global community. It ties in a lot of things that we've actually talked about.

Leena (: 36:03

Definitely.

Sarah Payne (: 36:06

So, yeah, we're super proud of Untours and what we've created and the fact that it is still existing. I mean, 50 years later, I think it's actually our 50th anniversary this August.

Leena (: 36:18

Amazing.

Sarah Payne (: 36:20

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's really cool. There are challenges and we really are deeply invested in keeping it going because to your point, this example of an entrepreneur who took a vow of poverty and then created a profitable business, it's like that has to live on. So, it's a good burden that we bear, but that's his legacy. And so, going to do everything we can to keep that alive. And the foundation has fortunately been doing really well. We have some generous partners. The growth that we've been able to have just in terms of funding more companies has been awesome. Yeah.

Leena (: 36:53

Yeah. Well, and the other thing about Hal Taussig, I just also just wanted to connect one more little dot. We touched on it how the founders of B Lab, they knew and they were inspired by Hal Taussig and his business model in a sense. Does that make Hal Taussig like the grandfather of B Corp? It does, doesn't it?

Sarah Payne (: 37:14

I'd say so. Yeah, yeah.

Leena (: 37:16

He's literally the OG B Corp, before B Corps were there, and he was like he inspired the movement. It's amazing.

Sarah Payne (: 37:26

I'll say this without Hal, I'm not sure that we would have a B Corp movement. So, this one person who really gave a lot of the impetus to make this happen has led to now a community of 10,000 businesses strong around the world that are redefining-

Leena (: 37:45

Wow.

Sarah Payne (: 37:45

... success in business that is not about making money. And so, I don't know. I guess one of my final thoughts, and it's like I think about this often is, again, it's a cliche, but one person truly has the power to make a difference. Living authentically, living your values, being just an open-hearted person. You don't know what you can inspire. The ripples are real, which I think is one of the coolest things that you can take from the story, right?

Leena (: 38:14

Oh, I love that. Oh my gosh. Wow, Sarah, thank you. I think we can end with that, that the ripples are real.

Sarah Payne (: 38:21

Yeah.

Leena (: 38:21

And one person can do so, so much. I wonder if Hal knew that by his example, so much goodness would follow as a result. Think about all of the companies that Untours the Travel company by funding Untours Foundation, all the investments you've made in those 400 companies, those are real companies and real people who are positively impacted. And then, yeah, like you just said, inspiring the B Corp movement, 10,000 plus companies going strong. It's beautiful.

Sarah Payne (: 38:49

Yeah. It's funny because I think Hal...

Leena (: 38:51

Well done Hal if you can hear us.

Sarah Payne (: 38:52

Right, right. He's such a humble person that sometimes I'm like, "Would he like that we're out here talking about his name all the time." But you know what? It's for a good reason. And that's not the point. We're not actually trying to idolize this person, right? But yeah, I mean...

Leena (: 39:07

We had a funny thing happen, when we created his video, we edited it. And Sarah, you and I got onto a bunch of calls and interviewed a bunch of previous winners of the Hal Taussig Award. Again, these incredible inspiring leaders, incredible companies. But in the final cut of the video, it wasn't the final cut. We caught it before we went to the final cut. I think his name might've been misspelled, and I feel like the real Hal Taussig, and he passed away, when was it? 2000...

Sarah Payne (: 39:35

2016.

Leena (: 39:37

2016, okay. The real Hal Taussig, I swear. He was in there and he's like, "No, no, no, no. I don't need any credit." And so, even at the very end, and we did, we fixed it just before it went live. But I was like, lives, this person was so humble that I don't think that that was an accident. It was very sweet, but its incredible what he did. Well, thank you so much for continuing on and in his legacy and all the wonderful work you do with the Untours Foundation. And yeah, thanks for being on our show.

Sarah Payne (: 40:09

Thank you for having me. Always such a lovely conversation with you, Leena. So, yeah, really happy to be here. Thank you.

Leena (: 40:15

Well, that's all the time we have for today's show. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you've enjoyed the show, please subscribe, hit the button or share an episode. And if you have any feedback, questions or comments or show ideas, you can email us directly at hello at allpurpose.io. Thank you once again for joining us. We'll see you next time.